Naguib Sawiris is an Egyptian business tycoon. He’s also the founder of the new, liberal Free Egyptians Party. He also tweets and has an Internet site. He’s also in big trouble. For something he posted. Pictures of Muhammad founder of Islam? Anthony Weiner type photos? No. Cartoons of Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

ANDRE OBOLER The closing of Palestinian Media Watch channel is one example of how the website’s policies are inconsistent and only selectively enforced.Justice Louis Brandeis of the US Supreme Court once said “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”This is often used to justify “more speech” as the only solution to “hate speech.”In November, as parliamentarians and experts from over 40 countries gathered in Canada for the second meeting of the Interparliamentary Coalition for Combatting Anti-Semitism, there was a growing concern at rising anti-Semitism, and an increased acceptance that more than sunlight was needed in response.

At the gathering, I presented as part of an experts panel on hate speech online. One point I raised was the problem of YouTube videos that do not by themselves constitute hate, but which attract hateful comments.An example I gave was a YouTube clip of Sacha Baron Cohen’s song “Throw the Jew Down the Well.”The most popular comment on the video the morning I presented, as voted by YouTube viewers, read: “Lets [sic] genocide them by burning them! But this time, lets [sic] actually do it.”Should Sacha Baron Cohen or YouTube take this clip down if this is what it inspires? Should the comments be closed to viewers? The answer is unclear, but allowing this to continue is not a good thing and seeing how popular it is leaves me feeling very uncomfortable.THERE IS also a clear problem with hate groups, such as “theytnazism” on YouTube.I reported this to YouTube in February, and on November 22 – 10 months later – it was still active. The group includes a “list of people we hate and we want to kill.” It was a short list of “1. Blacks, 2. Jews, 3. Indians.”I then included it in a set of slides for a conference on anti-Semitism run by the World Zionist Organisation in France earlier this month and suddenly the group was gone. I doubt that was a coincidence, especially as the rest of my collection of similar groups (reported at the same time) are still active. One of these, with giant swastikas in the background, declares it is God’s will to murder all non-Aryans.The problem is not that YouTube never steps in. The problem is they are liable to step in only when there is public exposure of content they wrongly ignored, or when political pressure is applied.YouTube also seems to have started giving in to pressure to remove videos and channels that expose and educate against hate.A few months ago, for example, efforts were made to shut down the YouTube presence of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). The institute provides the English-speaking world with insight into the Mideast media. Some of the exposure is not welcome by those who say one thing in English to a Western audience and another thing at home.The MEMRI debacle seems to have been resolved, but YouTube is now going after Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) which fulfills a similar role, focused exclusively on the Palestinian media.PMW monitors, translates and shares examples of incitement. It was PMW that exposed the use of a Mickey Mouse character inciting hate and violence on the Hamas TV children’s show “The Pioneers of Tomorrow.”That story created shock waves around the world, leading to discussions in the Western mainstream media and at the UN of the link between incitement in the media and terrorism.PMW’s violation appears to be that it was posting “hate material.”There is no doubt that it was. However, like MEMRI, that material was not shared for the purpose of incitement, but to expose and counter the spread of hate. Some commentators have speculated that it is not the hate against Jews, Israelis and Americans – as shown in MEMRI and PMW videos – that is the problem, but rather the fact that the videos might cause a backlash against those promoting such hate.Any argument that uses free speech to prevent the exposure of hate speech is inherently deeply flawed.YouTube needs to get its act together.What it has created is a haven for hate, devoid of sunlight. Its policy seems inconsistent, ineffective and only selectively enforced. It is working against community expectations and the public interest. Ignoring illegal content, while removing the very sunlight needed to expose those spreading hate, creates a volatile environment.Social media is built on concepts of security and trust. When these start to go, opportunities for competitors are created. It may be too early to call this the beginning of the end for YouTube, but unless it gets its policies right, and properly enforces them, we may well see this megalith begin to slide downhill.The writer is an expert in social media and online hate. He is director of the Community Internet Engagement Project and Co-Chair of the Online Anti-Semitism working group for the Global Forum to Combat Anti-Semitism.

so it’s the perception that caused you to exploit the viewer with posed and digitally edited photographs? a Fool Born Every Minute:

BEN CURTIS: Maybe it always was. I myself get all my news from the Internet — primarily the AP wire. I don’t watch much TV, I don’t have access to a wide range of English language papers, so I get most of my news from the Internet. Now, when you get news from the Internet, and especially if you’re getting it from blogs, you can really fine-tune the range of opinions that you receive on a daily basis, and you can fine-tune it to just those opinions that conform to your opinion.

so it’s OK for Ben to use the internet to communicate with his radical element, but he is threatened by those Neo-Con blogs

BEN CURTIS: And when you understand how people who work for the media work and the difficulties they have there is a lot of mundane reasons why things happen — light, dust, cameras, trying to compress everything into one image. If the public understood more about the process, then perhaps there’d be less suspicion of it, although I suspect that’s probably not the case.

but when people do try to understand the process (like on blogs) then you are suspect of that? don’t you think that statement is a bit arrogant Ben? Assuming that it isn’t your fault that your media is abused in the media it is presented in, it is irresponsible and exploitative to not present the context or to make motions to clarify. Ben would have his audience believe the photographer has no intent in taking a picture of a toy in the scene of destruction. Then why was the technique used repeatedly?

It’s important to understand that there is not just a single fraudulent Reuters photograph, nor even only one kind of fraudulent photograph. There are in fact dozens of photographs whose authenticity has been questioned, and they fall into four distinct categories.

The four types of photographic fraud perpetrated by Reuters photographers and editors are:

1. Digitally manipulating images after the photographs have been taken.

2. Photographing scenes staged by Hezbollah and presenting the images as if they were of authentic spontaneous news events.

3. Photographers themselves staging scenes or moving objects, and presenting photos of the set-ups as if they were naturally occurring.

4. Giving false or misleading captions to otherwise real photos that were taken at a different time or place.

so it’s the perception that caused you to exploit the viewer with posed and digitally edited photographs? a Fool Born Every Minute:

BEN CURTIS: Maybe it always was. I myself get all my news from the Internet — primarily the AP wire. I don’t watch much TV, I don’t have access to a wide range of English language papers, so I get most of my news from the Internet. Now, when you get news from the Internet, and especially if you’re getting it from blogs, you can really fine-tune the range of opinions that you receive on a daily basis, and you can fine-tune it to just those opinions that conform to your opinion.

so it’s OK for Ben to use the internet to communicate with his radical element, but he is threatened by those Neo-Con blogs

BEN CURTIS: And when you understand how people who work for the media work and the difficulties they have there is a lot of mundane reasons why things happen — light, dust, cameras, trying to compress everything into one image. If the public understood more about the process, then perhaps there’d be less suspicion of it, although I suspect that’s probably not the case.

but when people do try to understand the process (like on blogs) then you are suspect of that? don’t you think that statement is a bit arrogant Ben? Assuming that it isn’t your fault that your media is abused in the media it is presented in, it is irresponsible and exploitative to not present the context or to make motions to clarify. Ben would have his audience believe the photographer has no intent in taking a picture of a toy in the scene of destruction. Then why was the technique used repeatedly?

It’s important to understand that there is not just a single fraudulent Reuters photograph, nor even only one kind of fraudulent photograph. There are in fact dozens of photographs whose authenticity has been questioned, and they fall into four distinct categories.

The four types of photographic fraud perpetrated by Reuters photographers and editors are:

1. Digitally manipulating images after the photographs have been taken.

2. Photographing scenes staged by Hezbollah and presenting the images as if they were of authentic spontaneous news events.

3. Photographers themselves staging scenes or moving objects, and presenting photos of the set-ups as if they were naturally occurring.

4. Giving false or misleading captions to otherwise real photos that were taken at a different time or place.